Unlocking the Power of Meditation Copyright Evolving Wisdom & Claire Zammit, Ph.D. 2018 For personal use only. To utilize these materials Copyright Evolving Wisdom 2018. For personal use only. in working with others, find out more about joining our Feminine Power Coaching and or Facilitation Certification Trainings. Unlocking the Power of Meditation Table of Contents Introduction..........................................................................................................................3 Chapter 1: Meditation as a Gateway to Awakened Consciousness.................6 Chapter 2: The Myth of the Quiet Mind...................................................................10 Chapter 3: Why Inner Peace is So Hard to Find...................................................16 Chapter 4: The Misguided Quest for Peak Experiences...................................21 Chapter 5: How to Avoid Falling Into a Meditation Rut.....................................26 Chapter 6: The Trap of Practicing with a Future Goal in Mind........................30 Chapter 7: Meditation 2.0: The Practice of Direct Awakening........................33 Chapter 8: Opening to the Miracle of Awakened Awareness........................39 An Invitation to Awaken ..............................................................................................45 About the Author.............................................................................................................46 Page 2 Copyright Evolving Wisdom 2018. For personal use only. Unlocking the Power of Meditation Introduction We’ve all heard that meditation is an essential part of any healthy, conscious lifestyle. Wisdom traditions have long taught meditation as a path to spiritual transformation and modern science is now showing how this ancient practice can improve our health and well being across dozens of life areas. As research on meditation continues to deepen, every year we’re learning more about how truly revolutionary it is to simply sit still! Indeed, meditation may be the most powerful tool we have available to us to transform not only our own lives—but human consciousness as a whole. Whether you’re a seasoned meditator or simply curious to give it a try, you probably sense that meditation holds the power to both unlock your higher potentials and awaken you to the mystery of who you are beyond the mind. But if you’re like most of us, you’ve probably also found that your actual experience of meditation rarely lives up to the lofty potentials you’ve heard about and sensed. Over the past decade, I’ve taught tens of thousands of people how to meditate. Working with so many dedicated and inspired people from all over the world has been a tremendous honor and has blessed my life in extraordinary ways. It has also given me a unique opportunity to see firsthand how people meditate—and how they think about meditation. People in my meditation courses run the gamut. Some have been meditating since before I was born (in 1965!) and have tried every “brand” of meditation on offer. Others come into my programs with very little or no meditation experience. Most fall somewhere in between those two extremes. Page 3 Copyright Evolving Wisdom 2018. For personal use only. Unlocking the Power of Meditation But wherever we are on that spectrum, one thing I’ve observed through my interactions with thousands of meditators is that the vast majority of us are making the same handful of meditation mistakes. Now, when I say “meditation mistakes,” I don’t mean small things like we’re sitting in the wrong position, or breathing incorrectly. I mean that the way we’re approaching the inner game of meditation is actually preventing us from discovering its extraordinary life-transforming potential. The mistakes I’m speaking about aren’t the fault of the individual meditator. They all have their roots in a common set of misunderstandings about how meditation works and what the true goal of the practice is. These misunderstandings are so widespread in today’s spiritual marketplace that many of them will probably be instantly recognizable and may even feel like unquestioned truths to some readers. To understand how they became so prevalent, consider this (potentially oversimplified) history of where meditation came from and how it got here: Meditation was invented thousands of years ago when life was unimaginably different than our lives today. It was invented and first propagated by uneducated hermits who lived in the jungle and then gradually refined in secluded monasteries and ashrams over thousands of years. In all of these religious contexts, meditation practice was embedded in ancient cultural myths and superstitious, pre-scientific worldviews. Now, suddenly, over the last half century, it has been rapidly translated and adapted by a wealthy, modernist, Western culture that has attempted to blend meditation with contemporary psychotherapeutic principles and practices to generate positive mental health and wellness. I acknowledge the simplistic nature of this history, but I’m simplifying in order to make a simple point: meditation in the contemporary West is still in its infancy and due to a complex swirl of secular cultural forces Page 4 Copyright Evolving Wisdom 2018. For personal use only. Unlocking the Power of Meditation interacting with it, this ancient religious practice is struggling to find a solid footing on this new secular ground. The vast number of different practices being taught, with stated goals ranging from stress-reduction to improved performance at work to better sex has flooded the contemporary spiritual marketplace with a confusing array of meditation techniques and teachings disconnected from a clear spiritual path and goal. The result is that, while most of us who try meditation end up deriving some benefit from our practice, we also tend to develop a predictable set of unintended bad habits that block us from the truly remarkable possibility that meditation was designed to bring about. In my decades as a spiritual teacher and practitioner, I’ve seen the power meditation has to change people’s lives, to connect us with a higher purpose and to awaken us to our true spiritual nature. I’ve also seen how all too often, despite the countless benefits that meditation can provide, these possibilities fail to materialize. Many sincere intentions to meditate have fallen by the wayside as confusion, frustration, or a sense of failure permeate the experience. If you’re like most seekers today, a satisfying and sustained meditation practice may have eluded you despite your most dedicated efforts. And it’s my conviction that it doesn’t have to be this way. When we learn how to recognize and avoid the most common meditation mistakes—and the misunderstandings that underlie them—we will find that meditation is not only one of the most life-enhancing practices we can do. It can actually revolutionize our entire experience of being alive. I created this book to help bring simplicity and clarity to this often confusing terrain. My hope is that you’ll read it with an open mind and a reflective spirit, and that you’ll find in its pages some welcome clarification of the path. Page 5 Copyright Evolving Wisdom 2018. For personal use only. Unlocking the Power of Meditation Chapter 1: MEDITATION AS A GATEWAY TO AWAKENED CONSCIOUSNESS Page 6 Copyright Evolving Wisdom 2018. For personal use only. Unlocking the Power of Meditation By now, most of us have heard about the tremendous benefits of meditation for nearly every area of our lives. Thanks to extensive research over the past few decades, the overwhelming scientific consensus seems to be that meditation is good for you. But saying meditation is good for you is a bit like saying exercise is good for you. Just as there are literally hundreds if not thousands of different forms of exercise, there are also hundreds if not thousands of different types of meditation. And, as with physical exercise, different types of meditation are designed to achieve very different goals. Various forms of meditation are being taught as a means of reducing stress, improving mental concentration and focus, enhancing athletic performance, boosting creativity, improving decision-making as well as generating relaxation, emotional well-being and a host of other physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual benefits. But it wasn’t always this way. Amidst today’s enthusiasm for the diverse tangible, measurable benefits of meditation, it’s important to remember that meditation was originally practiced and taught with one goal in mind: spiritual awakening. And it is to clarifying this supreme endeavor that this book is devoted. A Path to Awakening Like meditation, the idea of spiritual awakening or enlightenment is used these days by different people in different contexts to refer to many different types of insights and experiences. On the spiritual path, we can encounter a wide variety of mystical experiences, ranging from powerful spiritual feelings of bliss and love to Page 7 Copyright Evolving Wisdom 2018. For personal use only. Unlocking the Power of Meditation intense jolts of spiritual energy to profound experiences of expansiveness and freedom. And while it might be natural to refer to any of these experiences as “an awakening,” it’s important to understand that spiritual awakening itself is not any of those experiences. It can trigger all kinds of experiences, but awakening itself does not refer to a special, altered state of consciousness. The discovery of awakened consciousness